Counterpoint Concepts

In this 2006 masterclass, Sid Jacobs shows how to start using counterpoint in your jazz guitar playing, drawing on what he's stolen — his word — from Bach, Bird and Bill Evans. Counterpoint sounds like rocket science, but as Sid demonstrates, anyone who plays melody and chords is already dealing with it; seemingly simple ideas like embellishing guide tones grow into two-part playing that evokes both classical and jazz sensibilities.

What's covered

• Guide tones (3rds and 7ths) as counter-melodies — the essence of hearing the changes in Bach and bebop alike
• Approach-note embellishment: half step below, scale step above, applied to triads and guide tones
• Breaking chords into fragments for major, dominant and minor
• The melody-chord approach — bringing the melody forward instead of burying it in chord-melody block voicings
• Bill Evans ideas: melodic clusters and scales turned into cluster chord voicings
• Stealing one bar at a time from Bach's Lute Suites and taking it through the scale
• Examples on "Yesterdays", "Darn That Dream", "Autumn Leaves", "All The Things You Are" and "You Stepped Out of A Dream", plus performances including Wayne Shorter's "Infant Eyes" and "Chelsea Bridge" (with a Jimmy Wyble story)

This class suits jazz guitarists who want to enrich solo arrangements or create more sophisticated textures in duo and trio settings. Includes 18 pages of PDF materials in standard notation and TAB: counterpoint examples and exercises, plus "You Stepped Out of A Dream" arranged for guitar by Sid Jacobs. The videos are segmented so you can locate specific examples for repeated study. Full video is 1 hour 10 mins.